Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE, FRAS was a British science fiction writer, science writer and futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host. He is perhaps most famous for being co-writer of the screenplay for the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, widely considered to be one of the most influential films of all time. His other science fiction writings earned him a number of Hugo and Nebula awards, along with a large readership, making him into one of the towering figures of the field. For many years he, Robert Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov were known as the "Big Three" of science fiction. Clarke was a lifelong proponent of space travel. In 1934 while still a teenager, he joined the British Interplanetary Society. In 1945, he proposed a satellite communication system?an idea that, in 1963, won him the Franklin Institute's Stuart Ballantine Medal. Later he was the chairman of the British Interplanetary Society from 1946?47 and again in 1951?53. Clarke was a science writer, who was both an avid populariser of space travel and a futurist of uncanny ability, and wrote over a dozen books and many essays on these subjects. 

December 16th, 1917 in Minehead  /  Died:   Mar 19th, 2008 - at the age of 90